mdchan

Absolute garbage, compounded by the fact that the "final episode" is in the middle of the worst arc:  The Infinite Eight.  Sorry not sorry, but there is zero excuse to stop a season in the middle.  The series is actually 28 episodes long, but was divided up into two 14-episode cours for some reason...and honestly, after barely making it through this one, I have zero incentive to check out the second cour.

If you've got time to kill or like moe, this anime might be for you.  If you want something with good characters, a good plot, and just overall interesting...mayhaps you should look elsewhere.

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Story

What story?  Sure, it sounds interesting at first glance:  A human, an alien android, a time traveler, and an esper have to cater to the whims of a selfish girl in order to keep her from getting bored and wiping out the world.

Only, they're all high school students, and our "God" girl here doesn't even know she's doing it. 

Basically, it's just a bunch of teenagers (all of whom look human the entire time) being dragged along by an entitled girl because if she gets bored, the world goes bye-bye.  This isn't a bad premise, but the characters are so lack-luster that it just makes things that much worse. 

Points for premise, but that's all.  Even as a slice-of-life it isn't that interesting.  3/10

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Characters

I have, in the past, described characters before as either "cardboard" or "human oatmeal" and added the word "stereotype" or "trope" to that mix.  This somehow manages to take all of that and mash it together to create cardboard cutouts of tropes with the personalities of plain oatmeal.  I honestly didn't even know that was possible.

Oh, the characters certainly try to be interesting, but they're just blatant tropes and have zero character development through the entire series.

First is Haruhi Suzumiya, who is a sociopath in the making.  She's selfish and feels the world should revolve around her (and perhaps it even does in a grand scale); she will drag the others around without stopping to ask if they even want to do any of those things, bullies/blackmails other students into giving her what she wants, and would even end/recreate the world if she gets bored regardless of how anyone else feels.

Our next protagonist is Kyon, who doesen't even seem to have an actual name since nobody ever refers to him as anything else (even his own sister).  He is the second most lackluster character, and only has his sarcastic wit to attempt to make him interesting when really he is almost like a robot considering that he'll be in an actual life-or-death situation and act like it's just another day...even before he got desensitized to Haruhi's antics.

The third character we meet is Yuki Nagato who somehow, on a character scale of "cardboard" to "I'll never forget this character", manages to score even lower than "cardboard".  She's just...there.  She sort of came with the club room they found, and almost never actually participates in anything.

Then there's the moe bait, Mikuru Asahina.  She squeals a lot, gets forced into various outfits by Haruhi, cries at the drop of a hat, and is literally just there as fanservice since even when she largely participates in one event, she's asleep for pretty much all of it.

Finally, there is Itsuki Koizumi who is your typical "I never know what they're thinking" sly character.  He seems to enjoy being in the club formed by Haruhi, and is really the only one who doesn't seem to mind going above and beyond to keep Haruhi from getting bored.  And when he talks, he talks. 

Nothing interesting to see here.  It sounds like Koizumi is the favorite character of a lot of folks, and that's probably because he's the only one, save Haruhi, who actually has more personality than a slice of bread.  2/10

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Sound and Animation

Nothing memorable on the sound.  I don't recall any of the intro or exit songs, and though the BGM gets this creepy vibe during the more "alien" or "supernatural" moments, it really doesn't stand out except to set the mood for a scene. The voice actors do a good job (sub; I listened to about a minute of the dub and cringed).

No real complaints, but the sound doesn't really jump out at me either.  6/10

Animation is...pretty good, actually.  It's fluid and does a good job of keeping up with Haruhi's craziness, or to show how tired of everything Kyon is.  Certainly, without the vivid colors and excellent job in the animation, a moe character like Asahina wouldn't have stood a chance.  I'm not into moe, but I'm sure people who do will enjoy it due to the animation.

Even the very few action scenes are animated well, and it gives off a job of being weird when it needs to be.  If I had to find fault with something in the animation, it'd be the obvious CG cave cricket part.  It just looked out of place from nearly start to finish; like there was something strange about it (which had nothing to do with how strange a cave cricket looks in general).

Animation is fairly solid, but did have a hiccup here and there.  8/10

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Overall

While I liked its nod to Phoenix Wright in the "Remote Island Syndrome" final episode, that still isn't enough to save it.  I watched it in order, but apparently it wasn't even aired in order but as a hodgepodge of episodes outside of a chronological order.

That...I can't even imagine how frustrating that must have been.  I suppose it might have been an attempt to keep the viewers in the dark or confuse them even more, but there are issues in the anime itself which are confusing enough; it doesn't need to look like someone accidentally spilled a box of puzzle pieces and decided to put it back together in a way which obviously doesn't even work.

The novelty of the anime wore off after the third episode (chronological order, keep in mind) when I realized that, oh...no, these people don't still have chuunibyou syndrome and this weird stuff is actualy happening.

While I'll admit that some of the existential parts Koizumi brings to the table are interesting in general, that's just because I find those sort of theories interesting to read/watch/discuss.  Same with things such as quantom theory (time travel).

I specify "time travel" and not "time loops" because I feel the latter is one of the laziest pieces of writing (and is present in this anime, sadly).  The reason it's lazy?  It adds nothing except a (usualy unnecessary) answer to a question nobody asked.  Nothing has to change when there's a time loop, because the events are set in stone; they already happened and the characters cannot change anything (even if they think they're changing it, they're just perpetuating the loop).

For example, if little Timmy went to the park with his dog, had a great time, and came home...nobody would question it.  But what if Timmy's friend had gone back in time to suggest (accidentially or on purpose) that Timmy take his dog to the park and that's the reason Timmy went?

That's basically what it's like whenever a time loop appears in stories/anime/ect; and this anime is no different.  It makes zero impact on the plot, and even the characters don't change at all with the knowledge they gained from discovering that it was a time loop.

The biggest reason why I kept going to the next episode (and it was certainly easy to take breaks between episodes since I'd sometimes get bored in the middle of one) was solely for Kyon's snark...and even his pessimistic internal monologing (which serves as narration and does often bring the mood from "omg-hyper-squee" to "meeeeh") isn't nearly as good as Shinichi Kudo's dry humor (Meitantei Conan).

I'm sure I'll be roasted for this review; please take your torches and pitchforks elsewhere.  This anime does not live up to its hype, was poorly written, had its original airing scrambled, included some of the laziest plot devices, ends its first season midway (or more like in the beginning) through the worst arc ever, and has some of the most unintersting characters.

Not even good for background noise because Haruhi is energetic to the point of being more obnoxious than Natsu Dragneel (Fairy Tail), Daisuke/Davis Motomiya (Digimon 02), and pre-Genin Naruto (Naruto) put together with Renge Houshakuji (Ouran High School Host Club).  So, this anime is basically just a boredom killer.  3/10